Stories You Can Use in Tomorrow's Speech!

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Light This Candle

I’m always looking for quotations I can use in a presentation. I have found that historical events often provide stories that include powerful quotations. One such example is the story of the first flight into space by Alan Shepard.

On May 5, 1961, he crawled into his little Mercury spacecraft with very little room to move around. One writer said that it would be like sitting in the driver’s seat of a small car with two heavy raincoats on.

Because of weather conditions and minor repairs to his radio system, he remained cooped up in the small space for four hours as NASA pondered whether to launch him or not. Finally, tired of waiting, he asked this vivid and powerful question: “Why don’t you fellows fix your little problem and light this candle?” Shortly after, they launched Shepard for his 15-minute flight. (“Light This Candle” became the title for a biography of Shepard by Neal Thompson.)

This story could be told to emphasize that at some point you must take action on a problem you have been working on, or you never know if something will work unless you try.